Rhizomania Part 14

"We got to get this Sayre situation taken care of, though," said Shorty. 

As a compromise, a note was given to Frank's wfe Maybelle, who'd stopped by Shorty's house on her way down to the Spanish Store. She had plans to spend her afternoon doing some sewing with Hortencia Lujan, and Hortencia's son Cesario would convey the note to his employer, making sure that Doran's planned visit would be a welcome one. 

If the answer was no, Cesario would tell his mother and his mother would tell Maybelle and Maybelle would tell Frank to come down and stop Doran before he got to Sayre's place. Once this awkward arrangement was set in place, it was time for Doran, Shorty and Frank to get busy in the hay field. 

Frank, surveying the long, narrow field which sloped down the gentle hill from his own ranch to Short's, scanned the windrows of raked hay. Each stripe in the field had gone from green to pale yellow as the hay, turned over two days after the cutting, lay neatly arranged for gathering. 

Frank looked at Shorty, then stepped forward to lift a few strands with the toe of his boot.  He let the hay fall again, seeming satisfied. 

"You sure this is dry enough?" said Shorty. 

Frank, in answer, bent down and lifted a double handful of hay, pulled it tight between this fists, and began to twist, frowning as he turned his elbow halfway over to get the tension he wanted. After a second twist, Frank eased his grip on one side of the hay bundle, studying the stems as they unwound and sprang apart.  

Behind Frank, his brother said "What you want to do all that work for, Frank?" Shorty reached out and snatched away three or four stray strands  from the thick bundle Frank held. 

Shorty gave the few strands he held a quick spin and then pulled quickly. There was a small "snap" sound. All but one of the stems broke off cleanly. Shorty dropped the bits onto the ground. "It's dry," he said, with satisfaction. 

"You did that with what I'd already twisted up," said Frank, his quiet voice betraying his mild irritation. 

Shorty, who'd already moved on to pull his tobacco pouch out of his shirt pocket, gestured with the back of his hand toward Doran. The younger man understood what he was supposed to do. 

Doran reached down to a new place in the raked-together row of cut hay and picked up a small handful of hay. Realizing he had grabbed  too much, he divided the bunch and dropped the extra stems to the field near his dusty mulehide boots.  He wound the strands around his fingers at both ends, as he'd seen Shorty do, and pulled. This time, all the strands snapped easily. 

Frank looked out over the long downhill field, lined with rows of dried hay,  pale with separated stems slightly askew and stiff from being warmed int he sun. "You can see it's dry," he said. "No green underneath of it."

"So what'd you want to do all that work for, pulling so hard your face turns red?" said Shorty.

"Your way, you don't get a big enough bunch," said Frank, evenly. "If you get hold of some dry ones but the rest of 'em still ain't ready, then --"

"Like the ones is gonna be different, them special ones a inch or two over," interrupted his brother, disgusted, Short finished rolling the cigarette paper around loose tobacco, licked the edge of the paper, sealed the cylinder, and stuck the finished cigarette in the corner of his mouth. 

Doran spoke up quickly. "Should I get the hay sled or should I gather up rows first?"

"Get the sled," said Frank and Doran at the same time. 

Doran trudged uphill to the long, low shed where the haying equipment was kept. On its side, leaned against one splintered wall was a rough slatted sled Shorty had fashioned from two heavy ladders nailed together side-to-side  after the back axle on the old hay wagon had given way the season before. Doran tipped the sled onto its wooden runners and  loaded two hay-rakes and a pitchfork onto the slatted top.  He stepped inside the loop of the heavy rope attached to the front of the hay sled, then stooped and lifted thre rough rope to chest leavel. He leaned forward and the sled slid a bit behind him. Doran put power into his legs and began to pull the empty ladder-sled out the doorway of the shed. Empty, the sled was manageable with one man towing it, but once the hay bales were loaded on, it would take two men inside the tow rope, walking shoulder to shoulder, to get the hay to the barn. 

At least the first trip was downhill. Once the sled had been brought down, Doran dropped the rope and stepped out of the loop. He took the closest hay rake from the slatted top of the sled and carried the rake to the nearest windrow. Using the tines, Doran gathered a loose clump of hay around the head of the rake, then used this padding to push the line of hay forward. When he got to the end of the windrow, he maneuvered the gathered hay into line with the next windrow. Then stepping to the side, he turned and began walking toward the hay sled, dragging the hay from the combined windrows behind him, as those he were a horse and the rake was a plow. 

Frank was a firm believer in using the wide wooden rake like a cowcatcher on the front of a steam locomotive, shoving the hay forward. Shorty, on the other hand, held the belief that pushing was too much struggle with the arms when dragging the rake behind you was so much easier, depending on the strength of the legs. The previous season -- his first -- Doran had developed this double-windrow, push-then-pull method which both kept the peace and didn't wear out his poor body in one place more than another. At least the handle of the hay rake was silky smooth and easy on his hands, because Shorty had sanded and varnished the wood after building the rakes and Frank was a tidy man who kept all the tools hung neatly inside the weatherproof shed. 

More compromise was needed when, after a rest break on the shady back porch of Shorty's little house, where the men passed the cool dipper of well water around, it was time to bale the hay. Shorty didn't hold with fancy machinery to bale his hay, and Frank thought az two-cylinder gasoline engine was a poor investment, considering how often the baling machines broke down and needed new parts. Thus the loose hay from the adjoining ranches was baled by compressing it, one bale's worth at a time, inside a wooden box. 

Or rather, the first load was compressed in a tall narrow four-sided box. The next dozen forkfuls of hay went into a short wide box  open at the top. Shorty preferred the stomp-it-down method, in which the loose hay was gathered from the large pile which had been dumped off the loaded hay sled. This was jammed into the short open box. Before it was loaded with hay, the baling box had lengths of twine laid along its bottom and the ends of these trailed over the sides of the box. Each strand of twine was fitted down into an open slot in the box rim. The hay was then tromped down until the box was full. The twine was pulled up out of the slots, brought over the top from each side and then tied, Once tied up, the finished bale was dumped out. ready for the stack.

But Frank had what he called an "efficient" baling box (which Shorty called the "fancy" box). This tall box was closed on all four sides, except for two narrow horizontal openings, one about a third of the way up, and the other two-thirds of the way up. Hay was also crammed into this box, but rather than human feet doing the mashing down, it was a heavy plunger Frank had bolted to the top rim of the box. The plunger was made from the iron handle of an old water-well pump, and when Doran lifted the lever and then let go,  and a thick heavy chunk of wood, which seemed to be from an old railroad tie, thumped down to top of the packed hay. 

The process of lifting and dropping the lever to drop the wood chunk into the box was a slower one than stomping with the feet, but the time difference was made up later. In the tall box, the hay compressed better.  And it was easier and faster to tie the bales with twine inside the narrow horizontal openings than it was to try and keep tension on the less-compressed hay in the short box. 

Doran used first the tall box, then the short one, taking it in turns. During these maneuvers, there were still fine points to be carefully attended to.  He still had to compromise on all of them. For example, Frank held the view that twine around a bale ought to be "two across and two around," while Shorty was a "three across the top and one up the side" man. There was also dissent on whether a slip knot or a square knot was the proper one, and once he got tired, Doran couldn't even  remember which brother preferred which knot. 

Besides the struggle to please both brothers, the work in the hay field was so hot and wearisome that Doran began to think that working for John Sayre, whatever tasks he might be required to do,  could possibly be a relief compared to the struggles to please here at home, plus the  monotony of piling the hay bales onto the sled and helping drag the sled to the barn. 

They finished the long field a bit before sundown, but of course the work day was not yet done.  Doran still had evening chores to do after he and Shorty got back to the little house.By the time he'd filled the old coffee can with chicken feed from the burlap sack, the sky was totally dark. As Doran fed the chickens , he was forced to scatter the feed where he heard the most clucking and scratching, hoping all the birds got a share. 


                                           ****

                                           

The next morning, Doran woke and instantly remembered that he was to go see John Sayre first thing.  Doran opened the straw suitcase which held his only change of clothing.  He smoothed the coverlet of his bed, then laid out his good clothes over the quilt: a linen shirt with a small hole at the hem which wouldn’t show when it was tucked into his trousers, which were black, shiny in the seat, and a bit too long for him. The next item was a black string tie,  rather creased and worn, but serviceable.  Doran went to the water bucket on the back porch, carried this out to the yard and ladled cold water over his head, face, neck, and chest, his breath puffing with shock as the cold trickles ran down his body.  Doran used a ragged bit of clean cotton rag as a combination washcloth and towel, and then he stepped into the dim interior of the stone house to dress and comb his hair.  He applied a bit of Waterson’s dentifrice powder to his teeth with a forefinger, the bristles on his toothbrush having worn down to nothing some weeks before.  He then sat down on the edge of his mattress with his boots. Noting that Shorty was busy at the kitchen stove, bent over its open grate, shoveling out ashes and bits of blackened wood, Doran surreptitiously  removed a pair of worn black socks, with garters, from his suitcase and slipped them on his feet before jamming them  into the mulehide boots.

Doran shut the suitcase, then carried the narrow string necktie to the kitchen, and watched himself in the broken bit of looking-glass which hung by the kitchen door as he fastened the tie around his collar. As he finished dressing, he listened for a knock on the door, in case Frank came by to tell Doran that John Sayre did not want visitors that day. But he heard nothing, and so took a comb from a shelf over his bed and tried to order his hair neatly.

Shorty, frying eggs in bacon grease, turned to scan Doran in his good clothes. “I’ve seen dead people not as dressed-up as you are,” the older man remarked.  He lifted the skillet by the handle, and with a quick movement of his wrist, flipped the eggs over so that the balls of yellow yolk landed in the hot grease and sizzled.   Shorty slid the eggs onto a chipped plate, added stiff, wrinkled strips of home-cured bacon, and laid the last of Hortencia’s flour tortillas over the plate’s contents. “Here,” he said, putting the plate down on the table.  “Lean over your plate when you eat so you don’t get grease all over you.”